MetaMorphic is a fantastic tragicomedy that redefines what it means to adapt in a period of American turmoil. What at first seems to be a string of disappearances of people exhausted by modern systems – including a capitalistic workplace, dysfunctional education system, and twisted social media – is later revealed to be a transformation into another form of life and way of community living. MetaMorphic asks what survival and evolution looks like in a world where modern systems are destroying a natural world. It asks who will endure and how can we start anew? In contrast to Kafka’s tale, MetaMorphic posits it is those who struggle most that have the answers and tools needed to carry on.

Dolores Díaz is a Chicago-based Chicana playwright originally from the border city of Laredo, Texas. Her plays investigate the gray areas that defy definition, the contradictions within the individual and group, and the hybrid places where the notion of “natural” is investigated, challenged, and revealed. She uses boundaries as a vantage point to observe different points of view and as a means to interrogate current affairs.

Díaz is currently in residence with TimeLine Theatre and teaching playwriting at Columbia College. In the spring, she will begin an artistic residency with Northeastern University and teach graduate students at Texas Tech.

Most recently, Goodman Theatre – in partnership with Chicago Park District, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Chicago Latino Theater Alliance, and the National Museum of Mexican Art – produced her play, Zulema, which toured the Chicago Parks District with a finale in Millennium Park.

Prior to this, Dolores developed work with Broken Nose Theatre, taught students via the National High School Institute at Northwestern University, and served as a guest artist with Mosaic Theater in Washington, DC. Her play, MetaMorphic, commissioned by Shattered Globe Theatre and workshopped with WildWind Lab at Texas Tech, was a semi-finalist for the 2021 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. The Curse of Giles Corey was a finalist for Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and a semi-finalist for the 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Los Tequileros received a reading from 16th Street Theater in October 2019.